Just recently I read about a case of salary discrimination where a female worker found out that she was paid less than her male counterparts for 19 years. She found out by accident because she was about to retire and a memo was sent to her containing three of her male coworkers’ salaries. She was more senior than most of them and was paid anywhere from 20% to 30% less. This reminded me of one of the companies I worked for because my coworker and I found a list of everyone’s salaries on that company’s shared drive under a folder named Public/Company. If you sorted the list by salary and position it was pretty clear all the women got paid the least in their roles compared to their male counterparts. Additionally, new hires were paid quite a bit more (10 to 20%) than people who have stuck around the company ever since the lean years of 2001 to 2003. When I was leaving the company I made it clear to my manager that I and my cubemate knew this information since it was on a public shared drive where we store our collective files and he was pretty pissed because he found out that a brand new guy a couple levels below him was paid more than him. So he packed up and left soon after me. After we both left nearly everyone in the engineering organization of that company got a raise. It felt like a lot of drama at that time, but I think in the end everyone was better off because the salary information was public (even though it may have been unintentionally public). The people who stuck around got a “market adjustment” and mostly caught up to their new peers, and those of us who left found better opportunities.

So having gone through that incident, I have thought a lot about the pros and cons of public salary information in a corporation. Here are my conclusions:

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1. Companies can’t secretly discriminate against workers if salary information were all public. This will pretty much eliminate lawsuits where employees do find out discriminatory compensation.

2. There is no secrecy between coworkers so there is no speculation as to who is getting paid more, and so everyone can just focus on work. If salaries were posted by position then there wouldn’t be an incident where newcomers with the same positions are paid a lot more just because they joined at a more prosperous time.

3. There would be better accountability for a company as to where their money is going. For example, public companies disclose the pay packages of executives because shareholders like to know the information. Also, the government gives detailed salary information on all positions because they are spending public money. If everyone in a company knew what others were making, then it’s easier to trim the fat when needed.

4. Employees would be more aware of their worth to a company and the career and promotion paths would be more clear. This gives employees direction and something to work towards. In the government they basically state how many years of experience or education you need for a certain pay grade. This makes it easier for people to figure out what they need to do.

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1. Workers may be more complacent in knowing that they will get paid a certain amount as long as they stick around. They may not work to their max potential because they already know what raise and bonuses they would get.  However, I think companies could avoid this complacency by giving out performance based raises and bonuses and clearly state what the rates are for each performance level.

2. Companies would have to shell out a lot more to hire people from competing firms during great economic times because they would have to raise the rates for everyone.  I do think this is a good thing for the employees, but it can be costly for employers.

3. Companies with posted salary information may give  regular but smaller raises and bonuses because they need to make the most amount of people happy.   This is how it is in the government, but it doesn’t have to be always true.

I know that in America people believe that salary information should be confidential, but I really think that open salary information could be beneficial to employees and employers. Since I am Chinese I do discuss salary information with my friends and it is actually very helpful to know what the market rate is for my position.  I think ultimately public salary information has a stabilizing effect in a company because those who are comfortable with what everyone else is being paid are probably happy with what they are being paid.   Since employees often leave companies due to their thoughts about their salary, a company can benefit from workers who are content with their salaries.

What do you think?  Do you work for an agency with public salary information?  Do you wish you worked for one?

Today as I was driving to work the news did a short report about Homestead High School students going to the 18th annual National Science Bowl sponsored by the Department of Energy. This is a contest where you answer questions about a variety of scientific subjects. Everyone gets a buzzer and you buzz in with your answer for points. It is sort of like Jeopardy, but it’s multiple choice. That news clip stirred up quite a few memories because I participated in that contest when I was in high school and my team made it to the nationals two years in a row after winning the East Bay regionals. We all got an all expense paid trip to Washington DC and had a lot of fun. I would say that was one of the highlights of high school for me.

Even though it has been seven years, I still remember the day of the regionals of the second year I participated. Since it was on a weekend I overslept and my physics teacher’s van was at my door. My teammate knocked on my door and my mom woke me up and I ran down with my hair uncombed and hopped in the van. We won after a few hours of intense competition. A few months later we were flown to DC and participated in the nationals. We met some really weird New Yorkers there. One of the New Yorkers looked so much like one of our classmates that they could be twins. What’s weirder is that they and had the same first name and last initial. I took pictures of him and took it home for comparison. That year my parents actually went to Washington with me just for fun. They had to pay for their trip, but it seems that they liked DC a lot. I really loved touring the Smithsonian and it really takes days to look at everything in those museums and I am so glad they are free for everyone. That year we came in the top 12 in the competition and won $1000 for our school.

Quite a few of my best friends were on the team and we don’t see each other much these days since we all live in different parts of the country now. The girl that’s my best friend is now a bioengineering PhD at MIT, and another best friend is now going to medical school in Cleveland (he still comes to read my blog and leave comments from time to time ). Another older guy is now doing a geophysics PhD at Harvard. I think another guy is also in grad school for something or other in San Diego. Looking back, I think they have always been the real hardcore science nerds and that is why they are all going to be doctors and scientists now. I think I was on the team because I was quick with a buzzer and I had a lot of random knowledge about rocks, poisons, and diseases. I enjoyed the game and competition, but I always knew that I would not devote my life to science. That is why I am the only one in that club that did not go on to a PhD and I have to say I am quite content with my decision. I also think that my friends are where they need to be, because frankly they are brilliant and maybe one of them will change the world.

So in summary, here are the random thoughts from this session of reminiscing:

1) Science is fun
2) You could win great prizes by being good at trivia and buzzers. Heck, Ken Jennings won over $2 million on Jeopardy.
3) Devoting your life to science isn’t as easy as donating your cadaver

Well, I have been working for almost three years, and I am . Some older family members have warned me about being a job hopper, but I don’t think it’s such a bad thing, and here’s why.

When we are in school we are trained to learn new things every semester. We also get new teachers and sometimes new friends. So in a way we are trained to change our environment constantly for 12 to 16 years. It is pretty jarring when you get out of school and you are expected to stay with one company for a very long time. In my case I stayed with my first two companies for more than one year each, and I thought that was a pretty long time at each job, but apparently some people I have met still think you should stay at a company for at least five years, or for life. I think that’s just silly because I really think that if I didn’t change jobs, I wouldn’t have learned as much as I did. I started in a pretty great company with a bunch of extremely smart people, but after testing one application for over a year, I was pretty sick of it. It was possible to move into another part of the company, but I would still work with the same product, and I decided it was time to move on. At my next company I learned a lot more about web technologies and picked up more useful skills. However, after a year and half of the same work I felt that there was not much more to learn.

Another thing I have written about before is that there is really these days. Companies can fire us whenever they want, so why are we expected to give our lives to one corporation? I think in today’s society, blind loyalty to one employer is pretty foolish. When you put yourself out on the market more often you learn what skills are needed in your field, and you can improve yourself accordingly. When your skills are updated and transferable you will not be afraid of a situation where your employer decides to shed you like last year’s fashion.

Job-hopping also builds up your network faster than if you would have stayed in one place. I think making just one friend in a workplace is a great thing, and if you go to more places you are more likely to make business connections that could be tapped later. It is definitely possible to find people you can get along with in almost any workplace. I still keep in touch with quite a few ex-coworkers and it’s fun and informative to discuss our jobs and lives we no longer work with each other.

Finally, when you change jobs more often you are more likely to get great raises from job to job. I think if I had stayed at my first company for 3 years I wouldn’t have had an over 50% increase in my salary in that amount of time.

I feel that in the Silicon Valley job hopping isn’t really looked down on as much because companies are dying and rising all the time here and people shift accordingly. Nearly everyone I know have had a job for less than two years. Right now I feel like I could stay at my current company for quite a while, because I still have a lot to learn after working there for six months. I am pretty sure I won’t stay for life, though, but a tenure of a few years is likely.

I am curious, though. What do you consider to be job hopping? Is changing jobs every year considered job hopping? How about changing jobs every two years? Do you think it is bad or good for your career?

So my dad wrote a comment on my earlier post saying that there is good and bad debt, and not having debt doesn’t mean you are good at managing your money.  That is definitely true, and I feel like I need to address what I think the nuances between good and bad debt are.

First of all, I am pretty sick of people telling me that a mortgage is good debt, because it is not that simple.  I think a mortgage can be good debt if the property you purchased  generates cash flow. In the case of a primary residence, this means that the cost of your monthly mortgage is less than the cost to rent a similar home. In the case of a rental or investment property, this means the rent you collect covers your mortgage and maintenance costs.  Additionally there is the possibility of asset appreciation, but that is an uncertain factor that should be measured conservatively.  A mortgage is definitely bad debt if you can’t afford it or if you have to  stretch your finances extremely thin to afford it.  If you are losing buckets of money by taking on a mortgage, then it is bad debt.

Another iffy type of debt is student loans.  A lot of people consider them to be good debt because they financed an education, but I think student loans can also be bad debt if the education was never put to use or if the interest rates are extraordinarily high.  Then again, it’s hard to gauge the future when you are young, idealistic, and have a passion for learning. However, it is possible to figure out the approximate salary you could potentially receive by finishing a certain degree.

Credit card debt is another thing that could be good or bad.  If your credit card debt has 0% interest, it is possible to leverage that money into safe investments and pay the credit card company back.  In fact a whole group of people have taken advantage of this in the past few years when bank interest rates were high.  However, most people who have credit card debt are in a situation where they are paying extremely high interest rates on purchases of useless items.  That is extremely bad debt.

So what’s the bottom line?  I think good debt is basically debt you could make a profit on and bad debt is the debt that make you have less than what you started with.  It is hard to figure out which is which in some situations, but when you realize you have bad debt you should work on eliminating it as soon as possible.